Sports flooring systems offer various designs including rigid construction providing little or no resilience, as well as highly resilient shock absorbing cushioned floors. Numerous anchorage methods are known by which sports floor systems are attached to supporting substrates, which are most commonly concrete. Many sports flooring system designs also float freely with no anchorage attachment to a supporting substrate.
Examples of anchored sports flooring systems that provide little or no resiliency are exemplified in designs disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,518,800 to Tank et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 3,566,569 to Coke et al. The Tank patent discloses a construction method wherein a steel channel is anchored to the supporting substrate and specially manufactured metal clips are used to secure flooring boards to steel channels. The Coke patent discloses a construction method wherein wooden nailing strips are anchored to the supporting substrate and flooring boards are attached to the nailing strips by stapling or nailing.
Designs disclosed in U.S. Pat No. 5,369,710 to Peterson et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,369,710 to Randjelovic et al. demonstrates widely used floating sports floor system construction. The designs disclosed in both of these patents include resilient components resting on a supporting substrate which in turn supports a wooden sub-floor and flooring surface.
Sub-floors constructed for sports floor applications are also provided in a manner combining anchorage to the rigid substrate, typically concrete, with included resiliency of elastic components such as those described in the Peterson and Randjelovic patents. Such construction is typically referred to, and known as, Fixed Resilient sports floor systems. U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,413 to Counihan et al. discloses a Fixed Resilient design including a wooden panel sub-floor supported by resilient components and a means to restrain the flooring system by incorporating steel channels attached to the supporting substrate.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,856,250 to Gronau et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 7,185,466 et al. to Randjelovic further demonstrates designs incorporating various wooden sub-floor and resilient components. These three referenced patents illustrate various methods to provide flooring systems with stability by means of substrate attachment while also providing resilient components for desired shock absorbency.
These referenced patents and designs, which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety, are examples of the known range of sub-floor constructions available and in use in the sports floor industry.